My Early Years

I was born the youngest child of four, early in the morning on a late winter's day in a small town in Utah.  My father left my mother with 3 kids and one on the way,  without any money, food, or hope for the future.  The Mormon (Latter Day Saints) community stepped in and paid our rent,  brought us food, and paid all our bills until my dad decided he had "punished" us enough and came back to claim his "property".  My mother became a Mormon in those days and stayed thus until she died, though she always tempered it with the belief in magic, aliens, and a deep love of nature.  My dad was agnostic to the extreme, but he did believe in aliens and loved nature.  My dad was a welder and heavy-duty mechanic. He built radio-controlled airplanes as a hobby, my mother was a bookkeeper, by education and an artist at heart.  They were both always making something.

In the Beginning (acylic on board)

I had two older brothers and one sister.  My brothers were close in age and were constantly being mistaken for twins as the younger was larger than the older.  I don't remember them very well because they died when I was only three.  They tried to escape the abuse they were receiving at home by stealing a small ariplane from the Ontario, California airport by hot-wiring it, taking off, and flying until they reached their school and crashing in the school yard.  The official report for the cause of the crash was mechanical malfunction caused by their dog getting tangled in the wiring, but my sister remembers them planning the whole thing.  My mother had a nervous breakdown and my sister and I were put in a foster home for a while.  I was always afraid of losing my mother.  I always wished I could lose my father. My sister was my constant companion and teacher.  She was always teaching me what she was learning in school.  When she went into her "hippie" period, she introduced me to Yoga, Herman Hess, Anne Rand, Astrology, and the wonderful world of psychoactive drugs.  My sister was my first spiritual teacher. I was a very sickly child and came close to dying serveral times from various types of measles and severe asthma.  I had always been a vivid dreamer, but during these times of near death I had some wild visions.  Many spirit helpers and animals came to my aid to guild me and teach me.  Many of the lesons didn't mean much at the time, but I have learned through experience the wisdom being passed to me.  I learned very early that grownups were not able to handle me discussing these visions.  The only one that believed me was my sister, but  now she doesn't remember our conversations.

Mamma Don't Leave Me (acrylic on board)

We moved around the West Coast quite a bit, following the road construction boom that happened during the 50's and 60's.  My dad made pretty good money when he had a job, but the work was sporadic and seasonal, so we lived in poverty most of my early years.  My education suffered greatly from changing schools as many as four times in a school year.  We always seemed to gravitate back to Southern California though and that is where my mother finally put her foot down and talked dad into buying a small house and settling down.  I was 9 that year.  We lived in that house, with the occasional escaping the "monster" by my mom, until I left home at 14.  My sister left home at 16, when I was 12, and things got much worse for me at home once I became the only child to beat on.  After several attempts to escape the "monster" on my own, starting at 13, with one disastorous attempt ending in a gang rape, I finally managed to get away and stay away at 14.  I managed to make it through the 8th grade, with the administration saying a relieved good-bye,  3-A's and 3-F's on my acedemic record.  This was the end of the first chapter in my life.

Spring - First in Seasons of My Life (acrylic on canvas)

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